Neon Nights: Daymond Runyon meets James Ellroy in the Nevada Desert

by John Hudson

  This guy had to be senile! I handed him Carmine's picture and said, "This is who I'm looking for."

  He looked at the picture and handed it back. "He's part of the Cohen mob."

  "I know that. Do you know where I can find him?"

  Davis looked over his glasses. "No, but take it easy, kid. I'll check around tomorrow and see what I can come up with. What did you say dat guy's name was?"

  I shoved the picture back into the folder. "Forget it! I don't think you could find your ass with both hands! Let alone a mob killer!" I stood up and walked toward the door.

  "Carmine Tonelli won't be easy ta find." I turned around and Patrolman Davis was smiling at me. He rolled up his sleeve and put his elbow on the desk. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll arm wrestle you for de information. If I win, you buy me a beer and I'll look tomorrow. If I lose, I'll stay late and look it up tonight. What’d you say?"

  This guy was crazy. I didn't want to arm wrestle him. "I don't think so."

  "What’s the madder--afraid of losing?"

  "To an old guy like you? You got to be kidding. I'm afraid I'll hurt you."

  "Afraid of hurting me? If I were you kiddo, I'd worry about getting my shoulder thrown out of joint."

  This guy was nuts and I wasn't going to play along with him. "That's okay," I said. "I'll get the information from Captain Gant tomorrow."

  "Gant doesn't have a clue what's going on with Cohen's guys. He couldn't find the information if it bit him on the ass! The only way you're going to get the information is from me."

  Against my better judgment, I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeve. I grabbed his hand and said, "Whenever your ready--old man." He was strong--a lot stronger than I expected. He had my hand at about a sixty degree angle to the top of the desk before I was able to stop him. I pulled with everything I had and got his hand vertical with mine. He was sweating and turning red in the face. He let out a gasp of air and tried to move my hand. I was ready for him and when he relaxed for an instant I went on the attack. Slowly I moved his hand. Once I got it past forty-five degrees there was no stopping my victory. I slammed his wrist on the table.

  He shook his arm and said, "Damn, you're strong, but you probably have to be since you're fairly short on manners."

  "You're not exactly Emily Post either."

  Davis laughed and put on his jacket. "Where are you going to buy me dat beer at?" he asked.

  "Wait a minute, you said if I lost I'd buy the beer but I won."

  "I lied."

  "Hold on now. You said that..."

  "Hey kid, I'm trying to show you a good time here--so shut up and call me Charlie okay?" He grabbed my jacket and threw it at me. He ushered me out of his office and said, "Come on, I'll show you the good places to drink."

  Charlie Davis walked over to a pre-war Buick and told me to get in. We drove though downtown Los Angeles until we reached a bar called the "Spot". Charlie parked in the street and said, "Carmine comes here once an awhile. Maybe we'll we get lucky and spot him."

  We sat at the bar and the bartender looked us over and asked, "What can I do for you?"

  Charlie ordered two beers and the bartender gave us a knowing grin before shuffling off to get the beer. "He made us," I whispered.

  "I wouldn't have it any other way." Charlie replied.

  I was confused. "Why would you say that?"

  "Because a lot of mob guys hang out here and if these guineas know you're a cop, they won't screw with you. Even they ain't dat dumb."

  "Yeah, but once they know who we are, wouldn't a guy like Carmine stay away?"

  "If he knew we were looking for him, he would. But he's got no idea we're looking for him. Besides, Carmine ain’t the reason were here."

  "Then why are we here?"

  "Because I want a certain party to see me, it's his tip off to call me later."

  "How long will that take?"

  "Who knows? It could take five minutes or it could take five hours."

  The bartender slid a glass of beer in front of me and Charlie laid a dollar on the bar and the bartender ignored it. Charlie drained his glass in two gulps and ordered more beer. The bartender never touched Charlie's money but kept refilling his glass as soon as it emptied.

  After an hour of non-stop drinking, my kidneys were screaming and I asked the bartender where the facilities were. He pointed to the back of the club, and set down two more free beers.

  There are few things in life which are good as peeing after drinking a lot of beer. It's almost orgasmic. I was enjoying the feeling when I heard loud, angry voices outside. I zipped up and opened the rear door.

  In the alley, two thugs were bending over a man on the ground. The guy on the ground had his hands pulled over his head and his knees tucked up into a ball. One of the thugs raised what looked like a blackjack over his head and I yelled, "Hey what's going on?" He stopped and looked up. One of the thugs yelled back to mind my own business. "Leave him alone," I yelled. The two thugs stood up and approached me. They were big. I'd be giving up at least six inches and thirty pounds, to either one. They got about ten feet away and stopped.

  "Come on out," the one with the blackjack said.

  "Yeah, come on big mouth," yelled the other one. "Let's see if you got the juice to back up your mouth."

  By the tone in their voices, telling them I was a cop wasn't going to end this confrontation. I could fight or slam the door and run like hell. They started moving forward and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was the barrel of a gun.

  The first shot went into the dirt in front of them. They jumped back, and the next shot ripped over their heads. They didn't wait for a third shot. They turned and ran. Charlie smiled and put his gun back in its holster. "Damn," he said. "You've only been in town for a few hours and you've all ready got into a fight. You're okay kid."

  I heard a moan and I ran over to the man lying on the ground. I rolled him over. He was little old guy. He had a bloody nose and a nasty knot on his head. I asked him, "What's this all about?"

  He tried to smile and said, "A simple misunderstanding about a bet."

  A small crowd started to form, and Charlie told them, "Move out of de way!" He pushed his way through the crowd and announced, "The show's over‑‑go back inside. There's nuttin’ to see‑‑move on now!" He helped me pick up the old guy. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed. "If I'd have known it was you, I wouldn't have wasted the ammunition!" He let go, and I had to catch the old guy.

  "It's a pleasure to see you again too, Officer Davis," said the old guy.

  "Do you two know each other?" I asked.

  "Yeah, we know each other," said Charlie. "You're propping up Saul Silverman--the worst bookie in Los Angeles."

  Saul pushed me aside and lunged at Charlie. "What's this 'the worst' stuff?" he yelled. "I don't go around saying bad things about you do I?"

  Charlie pushed him back and said, "No, but I'm not the worst bookie in Los Angeles--you are."

  "I'll show you the worst," shouted Saul waving his arms in the air. I stepped between him and Charlie. "You're lucky you have your friend here, or you and I would have this out!" Saul yelled. I pushed him back, and he didn't offer any resistance. He'd defended his honor as much as he felt necessary.

  Charlie laughed and said, "Dump him in a cab and send him to Mercy General."

  "What's with this Mercy General? Cedars of Sinai, is where I want to be sent, if you please!"

  "I don't care where ya go," replied Charlie, “Just as long as it's away from me."

  I found a taxi and I told the driver to take Saul anywhere he wanted to go. Saul leaned out the window and asked, "Who are you?"

  "I’m just a dumb Irish cop."

  "You have a name or should I just call you dummy?"

  "I'm Kelly O'Brien."

  "Well, Kelly O'Brien, you saved my life and Saul Silverman doesn't forget such things!" He yelled as the taxi pulled away from the curb.

  Charlie returned to his free beer. When I
entered the bar, several people stopped talking. I sat next to Charlie and whispered, "I'm sorry, I should have minded my own business."

  Charlie pushed a beer in front of me and said, "Don't worry about it, kid. My boss says I need to get more target practice. So I took him at his word." He nudged me in the ribs and said, "I wonder if those two thugs have stopped running yet?"

  "Probably not--they really took off in a hurry."

  Charlie slapped me on the back and said, "Come on, I want to show you something."

  "Don't you want to wait for your contact?"

  Charlie chuckled and took a drink of my beer. "He was here when we walked in. I just wanted to drink some free beer."

  Charlie Davis spent most of his career working out of the Hollywood Division and he knew all the hot spots. As we rolled through the streets of Hollywood, he kept up a constant commentary. He pointed out the haunts of the movie stars, but his favorite subject was the slimy side of the town. He pointed at a well‑lit drugstore, and said, "Most of da dope the Hollywood crowd gets--is from dat place, and if you got a big enough name, you don't need a prescription."

  He turned at the corner, and slowed down in front of a run-down hotel. "A couple of years ago my partner and I found a famous leading man entertaining ten female extras in dare, none of them over seventeen. For him that wasn't unusual. What was unusual was he had a camera man and a dog with him. When the dog showed up, one of the girls got scared and called us. We held him until one of the big-shots from the studio showed-up. The big shot started handing out cash and movie roles to the girls and nobody went to jail. That’s the way it works here if you got a big enough name, you can get away with just about anything—except murder. Even den, if you’re name’s is big enough, you might get away with that."

  We headed South on Vine Street. Charlie pointed out Grauman's Chinese Theater and said, "Bugsy Siegel used to have people put their hands and feet in cement too." Charlie waited a second and then said, "Of course, he also put in their legs, arms and anything else he could think of!" He laughed at his joke, and I chuckled a little myself.

  We turned right onto Sunset Boulevard. On the left was the Brown Derby and the Clover Club, and on the right was a large group of buildings Charlie called my attention to. "That used to be Charlie Chaplin's studio." He chuckled and said, "When I first started on the force, there was this cat house that had hookers dressed up like movie stars. I always thought its clientele was mainly tourists until I ran in a hooker who worked there. According to her, several big stars came to the place from time to time to work out their frustrations with a female co-star who wouldn't come across. At first, she didn't want to say much about her famous customers but, while she was waiting to make bail, I got her talking. She got off on the subject of how most of Hollywood's leading men were fixed. She said the little tramp had the best equipment of them all. She said he was fixed like a mule!" Further down Sunset Boulevard, Charlie pointed out the Trocadero and LaMaze supper clubs. "What a couple of gyp-joints! They get a buck for a drink, and it's not even a mouthful!" A sign on the right announced we were entering Beverly Hills. Charlie pointed at several closed gates and said, "That's Clark Gable's house," or "Gary Cooper lives up there."

  After turning on several side streets, Charlie pulled the car over to the curb. He grabbed a flashlight and opened the door. "Come on," he said, and I followed him across a nicely manicured lawn to the side of a darkened house. "Dis is it," he whispered. "Eight-ten Linden Drive, where on the night of June twentieth, nineteen-hundred and forty-seven, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel got his brains blown out all over Virginia "Sugar" Hill's Persian carpet, come on, I'll show you where it happened." I followed Charlie to the back of the house. He stopped in the garden and shone his light through a window. "Bugsy was sitting in a chair in da middle of that room, reading the paper. It was almost midnight when two, maybe three men, approached the house. They were armed with rifles." Charlie illuminated the window sill and said, "See dat?" The window sill had a deep scratch that had been painted over. "One of them rested his rifle there. They took careful aim and fired almost at the same time. They almost tore Bugsy's head off. His left eye was found across the room over by that wall. They even reloaded and fired one more volley into his corpse, then disappeared into the night. Of course, nobody saw or heard anything."

  I was getting a little anxious about standing on someone's lawn in the middle of the night. "Maybe we ought to be going," I suggested.

  "Why?"

  "Aren't you afraid we're going to wake up the occupants of the house?"

  "Hell, nobody lives here. The government grabbed it from "Sugar" for back taxes and sold it. The new owners haven't moved in yet. Maybe they're afraid Bugsy's ghost of will come back to haunt them." Charlie put the flashlight under his chin making his face look scary. "I know dat would scare the hell out of me."

  As we pulled away from the curb, Charlie asked me. "How's Bugsy's place doing in Vegas?"

  "After a rough start, it seems to be doing okay."

  "I was wondering something. You never said why you wanted to talk to Carmine."

  I told him about Johnny Del Rio's murder and the Attorney General's concern over it growing into a mob war. When I told him about my speculation of Johnny's death being connected to Mickey Cohen trying to muscle into Las Vegas, Charlie broke into laughter.

  "You think Mickey is making a move on Las Vegas? In a pig's eye," he snorted. "Mickey's got it made right here. After he convinced Jack Dragna he wasn't going to get back what Bugsy had taken from him--Mickey had the whole town in his pocket. Hell, he even offered Dragna control of all the narcotics sold to the coloreds for a ten percent cut off the top. Dragna didn't like cutting Mickey in but he had to accept. He didn't have the muscle to start a mob war and to make sure Dragna didn't change his mind Mickey kept a few guys like Carmine on the pay roll."

  "How long has Carmine worked for Mickey?"

  "A long time--at least five years and he was here long before that. He came out with "Lucky" Luciano before the war."

  "Johnny Del Rio once worked for Luciano. I wonder if they knew each other."

  "Probably, most of them do."

  "I wonder if he knew him well enough, to let Carmine sit behind him."

  "Maybe, I'll check the files in the morning and see if I can come up with a connection."

  The drive back to downtown Los Angeles was sprinkled with comments about famous crimes which had been committed near where we were. I was fading fast, and even Charlie was slowing down. I asked him where I could find a good, cheap hotel and he told me the "Blue Moon Hotel" was close by the station and "the cockroaches don't turn down the sheets at night."

  The next morning I felt like someone had stepped on my tongue last night. It annoyed me Charlie was fresh and ready to go. "I think we have a break on Carmine," he joyfully announced. "A vice cop told me where to look. With some luck, we should lay hands on him tonight." He shuffled through some papers and said, "I checked and I was right. Carmine did come out here before the war, in nineteen-thirty-eight. He came out with Luciano and Siegel and the rest of "Lucky's" east coast gang. Carmine worked as a knee-breaker for several loan sharks and bookies. We suspect he also worked for Siegel after Luciano was sent to jail. But I couldn't find any direct linkage with Del Rio but they sure as hell knew the same people."

  In case Charlie's lead crapped-out we spent the rest of the morning talking to what seemed like an endless parade of snitches. As soon as one would tell us where he thought Carmine could be found, another would contradict him. We were getting nowhere fast.

  About noon the phone rang. Charlie said a couple of words and handed the phone to me. On the other end was Dick. "We just received information that Carmine was spotted in Reno last week. He also has been hanging around Lake Tahoe, on the California side. Can you check it out from your end?" I told him I'd see what I could do, and he abruptly hung up. Dick's tone was far from cordial--all business and no warmth. Maybe he was busy and didn't have time
to talk, but there was something there I couldn’t put my finger on that bothered me. Little did I know how much it would bother me.

  When I told Charlie about Dick's call, he picked up the phone and said, "Let's see if the Highway Patrol can help."

  An hour later, the California Highway Patrol called back and confirmed Carmine had been staying at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, but he checked out two days ago. They said they'd keep an eye out for him, and the Sheriff in Lake Tahoe said he'd do the same.

  We spent the rest of the day talking to a bunch of minor league gangsters. All of them knew of Carmine but none knew him. Charlie and I grabbed some dinner and returned to the station to meet with an officer from vice.

  He told us Carmine was in San Francisco. Charlie finagled us a couple to tickets to San Fran and we hopped on an over night express. The San Francisco vice guys weren't overjoyed to see us. The lieutenant we talked to made it clear we were interrupting his investigation, but he'd agree to help us as long as we took one of his men with us. We agreed and the lieutenant made a call. In a few minutes the door opened and a young Oriental walked in. "Gentlemen," said the lieutenant. "This is Jim Yamaguchi. He'll be accompanying you tonight." I stood up and shook the officer's hand but Charlie stayed in his chair.

  At first I thought Charlie's snub was because the lieutenant saddled us with one of his men. It wasn't until we got outside his true problem surfaced.

  "It ain't bad enough they give us a baby sitter, but dey give us a damn Jap." The way Charlie hissed 'Jap' had the makings of a long evening.

  Even though I was in the Pacific theater during the war, I didn’t hold any bad feelings toward the Japanese who had been born here. I knew a bunch of them in the Salinas Valley when I was growing up, and I didn’t like that they were locked up during the war. I bore them no ill will but Charlie apparently didn’t feel the same way. I tried to smooth things over by saying, "Hey, relax, the lieutenant said the place we're going is in China town and that's Yamaguchi's beat. He could come in handy."

  Charlie opened the door to an unmarked car, and said, "Just make sure he doesn't get in my way!"